Chasing a Blond Moon(113)

“No. There are rumors in Lansing and Detroit that the feds are exorcised by a woods cop sniffing around one of their investigations.”

Siquin Soong? Service wondered. He still hadn’t heard back from Tree, which was unusual. “I haven’t talked to the feds, Captain.”

“Are you in tomorrow?”

He said he would be.

McCants said, “Want to grab a burger? I’m gonna sit on a field tonight.”

“Want company?” he asked.

“Sure.”

They bought burgers at the McDonald’s in Gladstone and headed to a potato field not far from the Mosquito Wilderness. They backed the truck into some spruce trees and sat inside with the windows cracked, eating burgers and fries. “Good field?” McCants asked.

“Got a lot of shiners here over the years,” he said. Too many to count.

At 11 p.m. a small buck walked past the truck, no more than ten yards away, sticking close to a wild olive hedgerow. McCants got antlers out of the back of the truck and rattled them together. The animal stopped and turned back to see what the sound was. The buck’s brisket was not swollen. It would take colder weather to turn on the rut, but deer were naturally curious, which got a lot of them shot every year.

When the deer winded McCants, it sprang away and disappeared into the hedgerow with its flag up in alarm.

McCants got back into the truck, turned on a small red light, and started her paperwork for the day.

Service said, “Where the hell did you come up with that pouch routine?”

“Red Eacun,” she said.

Eacun was a sergeant who had retired ten years ago, spent winters is Arizona, summers at his home in Cheboygan. He was a horseblanket, like his father, an old-time conservation officer who wore a full-length wool coat. Horseblankets were considered a breed apart by their successors.

“He said one of his guys used to use it. Works about ninety percent of the time if you size up the violets right.”

“You read those two right,” he said.

“It was sweet,” she said.

“Total bozos,” he said.

“Job security,” she said, grinning.

“What exactly is in the pouch?” he asked.

“That, Detective, must remain a trade secret.”





28

As soon as Newf was free of the dog run, she ran into the side hedges, snarling and barking. Service tensed, thinking the red dog was back, but Newf soon came back panting and wagging her tail and made straight for the house.

“Miss Congeniality,” he said to the dog, who looked quizzically at him.

There were two messages on the answering machine, the earliest from Pyykkonen, the latter from Treebone.

Tree’s said, “Call you back from a Clark Kent. You probably just off making life miserable for your Bammas.” A Clark Kent was Tree-talk for a phone booth. He had no idea what a Bamma was, but he could guess it related to rednecks. Tree’s wanting to call from a phone booth was a distinctly negative indicator.

He tried Pyykkonen at her office and got a recording. He called her house and the line was busy. It took four calls for her to finally pick up.

“You been trying to get through?” she asked.

“Couple tries,” he said.

“I’ve been online with Shark,” she said.

“Wetelainen online?” It was unthinkable. Yalmer Wetelainen’s life revolved around food, drink, fishing, and hunting—until recently.

“I showed him a site called Flyanglersonline.Com. It’s got loads of antique fly recipes. He loved it, went right out and bought a Dell. Now I’m teaching him e-mail and Instant Messenger.”

Service had no idea what Instant Messenger was, and didn’t care. “You called,” he said.

“I talked to the dean at Virginia Tech who was Harry Pung’s boss. Just as the records showed, he was not aware of a son and had never heard Harry talk about one. I don’t know what the hell to think anymore. I also put out a BOLO to the coast guard, county, and Troops for a blue watercraft. Nothing back yet. I called the locks at the Soo and asked them to scan the tapes. Anything on your end?”

BOLO meant Be On The Lookout. Cops rarely used the term APB anymore. “They have tapes at the locks?”

“Every boat that goes through.” He hadn’t known this and he was impressed that Pyykkonen had thought of it. He had assumed the blue boat had ducked into a harbor in the northern U.P.

“Irons in the fire here,” he said.

“We’re gonna break this,” she said, sounding like she was singing in a graveyard.

He opened a can of Diet Pepsi and leafed through a copy of Atlantic Monthly that Nantz had left when he heard a siren pass in front of the house. He sometimes heard sirens below the Bluff on US 2, but rarely in the neighborhood. He put down the magazine, went out to the truck with Newf on his heels, and clicked on his 800 MHz. Nothing.